Influence on communication
Development of Information Technologies is inherently linked with the development of communication in the society. As the main goals of the early efforts in computer science were primarily focused on bettering the transfer of information amongst people, as a natural outcome development of communication has been greatly helped by progress made in Information Technologies. It could even be said that upgrading communication was and is one of the primary goals of Information Technologies. Thus, we can conclude that in modern society Information Technologies and communication stand beside each other as two inseparable concepts, and it's hard to refer to one without including another and vice versa. Beginnings The strive to better communication has been constantly present throughout human history. To understand the current state of communication technologies in the modern world it is important to analyze communication in it's simplest form and be aware of the efforts humans have gone trough to broaden it's limitations. Communication represents an exchange of ideas, thoughts, opinions, emotions and knowledge of human beings amongst themselves, or in another word exchange of information. People have realised the potential value of information very early on in human history. The problem was that before the onset of the digital era there was not so much that could've been done to move communication to a higher level which surpasses talking and writing. The efforts to speed up communication were laregely dependant on progress in other areas of human learning, such as taming animals, inventing the wheel, developing industry and transportation. The first real invention in the field of telecommunications that was the first device to allow almost instantaneous communication over long distances without some form of vehicular transportation was of course the telephone. The telephone was first invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. and has since become an indispensable appliance in households, government and businesses, which serves to testify the obvious value of sharing information. Since the invention of the telephone progress has been made in utilizing electromagnetic waves to not send information only trough wires but trough air also. Of course as the digital era was nearing closer machines of high processing power, that could not only transfer information but also process it, have been invented. Today these machines are called computers, and initially they offered the capability of manipulating and storing exceptionally large amounts of information which would've been an impossible task otherwise. Since computers have become the main thing for storing and processing information into data it was only the logical next step to allow computers to communicate with each other also. One of the earliest efforts in this area is the so called ARPANET which was conceptualised in 1967 and it served as a precursor for what we know today as Internet. The expansion of communication in the digital era Internet allowed data transfer at an incredible rate between a virtually unlimited number of users. By the 1990's physical distance as an obstacle in communication has become a thing of the past. The immediacy of availability of communication has been immensely improved too by the invention of mobile phones. With huge improvants and newly made available ease of engaging in communication so has the value of information gone up. In a world where everyone gets to know a lot it has become extremely valuable to know only that which few do, or even more importantly to not be left behind. Of course mobile phones and the Internet where just beginnings and Information Technologies were still extremely young as a discipline at this point. Both of these represent primarily inventions made possible by defeating the hardware obstacles, but computers are machines that can store and also manipulate data, so the real progress came with the fusion of software and hardware developments in service of making communication better. Personal computers have gained means to exchange electronic mail, but also images and sound and video over the Internet and soon after mobile phones also. Yet it is a constant effort and in today's world with each progress made both in the field of hardware and software however slight, computers gain more processing power, or faster and improved networking or more means to compress, manipulate and share information. With the progress made in the field of software it is possible now not only to send a video or image field but also to stream it live almost instantaneously, and the receiver does now to have specialized equipment to receive it on the other end, just an Internet connection. And it is possible to connect to the Internet much more easily also using Wireless signal. It is possible to make live video calls while moving in a car or picking up coffee at a coffee shop, and it is possible to receive and share information trough many different mediums at the same time. Not only have the developments in Information Technologies made communication better, but communication as it is known today would be non-existent without them. They're basically one and the same in the modern world.